• IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE STEAM GROUP, DON'T POST ABOUT IT HERE, instead go post in this thread.
  
• Gifting and Contests should be done in another thread (this one, the Steam gifting and contests thread). Organizing four-packs in this thread is fine, however.
  
• All trading should be done in the The Steam Game Trading thread.
  
• If in technical trouble, consider deleting Clientregistry.blob! AppUpdateStats.blob is also a good candidate to delete when troubleshooting.
  
• Don't talk about shady key resellers in this thread! See this rule (2b. CD-Keys and international laws): If you are dealing with a site that sells you CD-KEYS from other regions then the one you live in, don't talk about it. Don't ask how to get around copy right protection or try to debate the legal grey issue with these sites. If you need to VPN to download/activate a title, or even download the game itself, then it is not legal and shady and we could get in trouble. Gifting games to goons in other countries isn't the same thing and will still be allowed.
  
• Don't beg for games in any of the threads, the group chats or the IRC channel. It's awful, rude and will just end up with lots of posts of people begging. We've built up a nice community with tons of generous people, yes, but begging for games is still a loving terrible thing to do, you cocks. Also, AxeManiac will loving ban you for it! So if you see any begging, report it with the note of "Axe said no begging".
  
• Always buy things during the daily sales and wait until the last day of a mega-sale to buy anything else!
  
• If you have any ideas, contributions or find any errors, please PM me on the Forums or email me here: steamthread@nanoaugur.net

• Basic Information - Hardware requirements, important website and SA thread links, basic specs on Steam, current betas etc.

• What is Steam? - Basic description of Steam, its history and clearing up some misconceptions about it.
  
• Steam Features - A list of Steam features.
  
• Some Terms a User Should Know - If you'll be using Steam to play your games, it's probably a good idea to know these.
  
• Other DRM or Accounts - Information on things like Origin, GFWL, UPlay, etc...

• Buying Games - Basics on how to buy games and what methods of payment are available to you. Some stuff on preloading and coupons.
  
• Applications & Software - Steam not only offers games now, but serious software as well!
  
• Regions & Country Codes - An explanation on how Steam divides the world, how price and country zones work and how to peak into other zones to compare prices.
  
• Deals and Sales - A quick look on how Steam offers amazing deals and gigantic sales, plus some tips on how to maximize your savings and minimize your headaches!
  
• Steam Support & Headaches - ...speaking of which. Some Knowledge Base articles and tips on how to interact with Support (which isn't very good).

• Gifting & Trading - An explanation and tips on gifting, where to do the gifting on SA, the GIFTTANK phenomenon and some basic tips for trading.
  
• Indie Bundles - A comprehensive list of most of the Indie bundles which come with Steam keys. Should help you when you need to know which bundle had which games for trading purposes or whatever else.

• New Community - A list of features and things you can do in the Steam Community, including the latest "Steambook" and Game Hubs overhaul.
  
• Community Market - People can now buy and sell various stuff using their Steam Wallets and Inventories.
  
• Trading Cards - Oh god, Gaben wants the rest of our money... The latest gamification of the Steam Store and player profiles.
  
• SA Communities - A list of goon-made Steam Groups for various games goons like(d) to play. Join them if you play these games!
  
• IRC Channel, Teamspeak - Where goons hang out and chat about dicks and videogames.

• Steam Workshop - A list of all the games which use the Steam Workshop architecture.
  
• Steam Greenlight - An overview on what Greenlight is, how it works, its rocky starts and the currently Greenlit games.
  
• Big Picture Mode - A presentation and some information on Steam's new mode, meant for TVs & controllers. So pretty!
  
• Mobile Apps - Some information on the Steam clients for your mobile phone. Please help me build this, since I don't have a phone which supports this!
  
• Steam for Linux - Here's some basic information about the Beta Steam Client for Linux.

• Enhanced Steam - A plugin / extension / addon for Chrome and Firefox that adds a lot of new features to the Steam webstore.
  
• User-made Skins - A list of a couple of what I think are good skins for Steam. Please let me know if there are others!
  
• Useful Websites - A gigantic list of various websites for trading, gifting, price-checking, profile-analyzing etc etc etc...
  
• Useful Applications - A small list of applications you should know about if you use Steam.

• Tips and Tricks - Pretty much a "How do I use Steam" list. Tries to explain even simple things, if nothing else you may learn how to do some things differently!

• Frequently Asked Questions - The old FAQ. Will get an overhaul once I find the time to read through two previous threads and note all the good questions.

• Game Giveaway & Contests Thread
  The mods created this thread because the main one got too "cluttered" with contests involving posting the cutest cat. If you're feeling generous, please go to the thread and share some love with your fellow goon! Also, don't be a dick and hoard gifts / take stuff without at least saying thanks.
  
• Steam: The Gathering - Let's trade cards
  Want to trade Steam Trading Cards or the goodies you get when you craft them? Use this thread to do it.
  
• Steam Game/Coupon Trading Thread
  Post in this thread if you have a copy of a game that you want to trade for another, or if you want to trade coupons. This is pretty self explanatory.
  
• Steam Goon Group Invite Thread
  If you want to join the SA Goons (LLJK) group, that's where you need to go. Don't clutter up the thread with a worthless one line post. Don't even include it in your post in this thread! Don't trade Steam IDs in this thread. Spam away in the Steam Community IDs and requests thread!
  
• Steam Greenlight Voting & Discussion
  Turns out Steam gets flooded with new games that want in on the fun, but Gaben doesn't have the time to sort through all of them, so Gaben had an idea: I'll have my monkeys users do the work for me! And so Steam Greenlight is born. Now, we use the power of Democracy to give Gaben more money.
  
• The Steam Goon Database
  Tired of not knowing who is who on your Steam friends list? No way to know who is actually a goon or just a friend of one? Well there's a solution. This is a list of goons and their respectively Steam Community ID along with other details that could be useful. Many have complained of not knowing who are actually goons on their friends list. This way you can check who everyone is on your friends list.
  
• Steam Anonymous
  This is, more or less, a support thread for those who keep buying games on Steam's Digital Distribution website (or other sites if you do that kind of thing), but never play them. Honestly, it's not our fault! OK, well, it is. We keep buying games, say "I'll get around to it at some point", and never do. This is where we rectify that problem.
  
• Amazon Digital Game Mega Thread. Deals, Q&As, Interviews with Developers and more
  This technically isn't a Steam thread, but Tony, the Marketing Manager for Amazon's Digital Video Games team, will be posting deals Amazon will be running on Digital Games (PC/Mac, Free to Play, Sony/Microsoft Points/Subs), meaning that you should keep an eye out there for good deals on Steamworks games!
  
• Steam Christmas Sale 2012: Gabenzilla vs MechaTonyzilla
  Welcome to the Steam Christmas Sale Thread. We let Gabenzilla destroy our beloved wallets for a few years now and no other monster seemed to be able to compete with his power. However lately a new threat has rised from the Digital Deal Ocean - MechaTonyzilla with his Amazon game sales started price-matching Steam and sometimes even leaving it in the dust. How will the epic battle unleash during the biggest sale event of the year? We don't know yet, but one thing we can be sure of are the identities of the victims: our wallets.

• Steam Downtime Announcements ,
  
• Steam Deals and Price Reductions,
  
• Free Steam games list,
  
• Steam Game Save Locations & Wiki,
  
• Steam Skins - 2010 UI,
  
• List of Games with 360 Gamepad Support,
  
• 2012 Powered by STEAMworks games,
  
• Giveaways and Betas Notice & Discussion Thread,
  
• The Greenlit games that gave keys thread (and non greenlight too),
  
• GamersGate Games you can activate on Steam,
  
• Green Man Gaming Games You Can Activate on Steam,
  
• List of Steam titles with library, community, or icon oddities,
  
• Slow Steam/Compatibility Mode Fix

• Linux Client - Valve are looking for Linux gamers to install and test the new Steam for Linux client. They're primarily interested in experienced Linux users. Blog, Steam Linux Client Community Hub, Survey
  
• Steam Chat webpage - Steam Chat is now available on the web. You can send messages to friends who are: Online, on the web, on mobile, and even those who are offline. http://steamcommunity.com/chat/
  
• Steam Hardware - Mysterious as gently caress.

Tecman fucked around with this message at May 18, 2013 around 14:20

• You have to pay for a subscription to keep Steam running! - There are no monthly fees to use Steam or download purchased games. Some games offered on Steam may require a monthly fee to play, such as MMO games. Games that require a monthly fee will be indicated on the Steam Storefront page for that particular game. Downloading additional content such as game updates or reinstalling the game after getting a new computer will not require any further purchases or fees, unless noted.
  
• You can only download the game a certain amount of times and only from one computer! - Games purchased through Steam do not expire - you will only be charged once for permanent access to the game through your Steam account. Purchased games can be downloaded as often as needed and to any computer with an internet connection.
  
• Offline mode doesn't work (or doesn't work if you're already offline / without an internet connection), thus you have to be online all the time! - This used to be true since Offline mode was very unreliable, but no longer! After years and years and years of "supposedly" fixing Offline mode, Valve have finally fixed it. Very speedy of them! The problem was if Steam is closed for whatever reason after loss of internet, the option to log in to offline mode would be there upon restart, but it would constantly come back to the can't connect screen.
  
• You can never get a refund for a Steam game! - This one is actually partially true, Valve Support don't like to refund purchases unless they're still pre-orders; those can get refunded without a problem. You usually get one chance per account to refund something (a "one-time customer service gesture") to your Steam Wallet as long as the reason isn't completely stupid, and if pressed enough you'll still get a refund for something that doesn't work. It's pretty much case-by-case, though.
  
• If Steam goes under at any time, we're all hosed and lose all our games! - Valve have said over and over again that if this were even to happen, they've already got a system which they can turn on which disables all the online verification. Now, re-downloading them would pretty much be impossible in such a scenario, unless Valve would honor a grace period and keep the servers online for a little while so everyone could download and backup all their poo poo.
  
• If I set Steam to never update a game, I don't have to patch it anymore! - Actually not true. All you're telling Steam is this: do not download an update to this game whenever you detect there's one online. You will STILL have to download an update if you attempt to start the game while you're online! If you REALLY want to keep a game un-updated, you'll have to keep a backup of it just in case and then have the non-update option turned on while ALSO remain in off-line mode. Keep in mind that Steam may *forget* that a game isn't supposed to auto-update, so you'd also have to keep an eye on the setting.
  
• You can only install Steam games onto one drive - wherever you've installed Steam! - This was true for the longest time, but ever since September 2012 you get the option to install to multiple locations / drives! Games managed by the new content system can select alternate installation locations other than the Steam folder (for the Windows client).
  
• Valve gives poo poo to / bans people if you trade games across continents and regions! - This is untrue (in practice), except for a couple of cases where you can potentially get screwed: a) You're actually selling the gifts and making a profit off them in huge quantities and someone complains about it, b) You're gifting a non-censored game to someone in Germany or other regions with lovely laws about violence in videogames (usually it's fine, but Valve has indicated this is a no-no), c) You're either gifting to or getting gifts from really cheap regions like Russia and Ukraine, where the prices have to be heavily discounted to combat insanely rampant industrialized piracy. Usually if anything happens at all, they'll disable your trading / gifting "privileges" on your account, very rarely do they actually ban you (unless it really looks like some sort of fraud on their end).

• Your own SteamID for people to recognize you and find you by
  
• A friends list with avatars to easily recognize people, with each friend having their own ID page, and an easy way to join Multiplayer games your friends are in
  
• A social-media type wall where you can follow your friends' achievements, game purchases, uploaded screenshots and comments
  
• The ability to create and join Groups
  
• Text or Voice chatting with individual people or entire chatrooms (voice chat isn't that bad, actually)
  
• An event scheduler to invite people to play games or other things
  
• Add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of the overlay
  
• The ability to Gift people games or Trade your Inventory items (Games, Coupons, TF2 stuff and more) with them
  
• Much, much more.

• Advantages - Total integration through Steam, including using the Steam framework for any update tasks. Delayed bans deny cheat producers accurate and timely information. This causes a reduction in the supply of cheat programs to players who want to cheat online.
  
• Disadvantages - VAC cannot detect 'content hacks', where, for example, texture transparency and color are manipulated, since they do not involve modifying any program code. In Source engine games the option to create "pure" servers (sv_pure) that prevent custom content from overwriting the game's defaults was created to alleviate this.

• Application ID / App ID - This is a number ID assigned to a piece of content (game, DLC, soundtrack, ...) when published through Steam. You'll see it in desktop shortcuts, Steam Store pages, user data directories (savegames, screenshots), etc. For example, Torchlight II's Store page is http://store.steampowered.com//app/200710, its Game Hub page is http://steamcommunity.com/app/200710, its desktop shortcut is steam://rungameid/200710, therefore its App ID is 200710. More about this here.
  
• Application (app) versus Subscription (sub) - This one is easy. An application is one "game" with its own ID assigned, whereas a subscription is the term used for game bundles, where if you purchase a bundle you get multiple games (applications). Subscriptions get their own numeric IDs too, compare app ids 2500 "Shadowgrounds" and 11200 "Shadowgrounds Survivor" with the sub id 552, "Shadowgrounds Pack". Keep in mind that sometimes bundles are set up as Apps instead, that's when you cannot buy the included games separately.
  
• ClientRegistry.blob - This file can be found (by default) under your Steam installation folder. The file holds your registration data for your games, as well as some account-specific settings, so a corruption of this file or outdated information may interfere with installing and updating Steam games. Deleting it will force Steam to acquire a new copy, which solves a ton of issues with Steam just by doing this. There are ways to read from this file with 3rd party tools, which is where all the "predictions" on releases that haven't been announced yet come from, since sometimes publishers add titles to the registry before making their Store page public.
  
• Offline Mode - This feature allows you to play games through Steam without connecting to the Steam Network - this is particularly useful if you do not plan on playing over the internet and would prefer not to download updates for your single-player games.
  
• Steamapps folder - This folder is located in the Steam directory and holds all of your Steam games, usually in the subfolder named "common". Most of Valve's games and some 3rd party ones also install themselves to a subfolder that's named as your login name. Sourcemods is a subfolder which holds all Source engine modifications you install.
  
• Steam Cloud - If a game supports this, it can write and retrieve files for each user on the Steam servers for things like personalized settings like keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, multiplayer sprays, or even saved games.
  
• Steam ID - A SteamID is a unique identifier (sometimes numerical) used to identify a Steam account. It is also used to refer to a user's Steam Community profile page. Sometimes the term is used to simply denote a user's profile page's url instead. You can read more about it here. This identifier allows server administrators to manage bans on servers and perform other administrative tasks without knowing a user's account username.
  
• Steam Play - If a game supports this, it means that you can use one license to download both a Windows and a Mac copy of the game. You don't need to re-buy the game for the other operating system, you will be able to play on the other platform free of charge.
  
• Steamworks - This can actually mean multiple things:
  - The Steamworks SDK is a Software Development Kit which, if your game is accepted on Steam, lets you integrate Steam features like Cloud, matchmaking, achievements, anti-cheat technology, in-game economy systems with microtransactions, etc. into your game. It's also available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide. This includes per-copy activation charges or bandwidth fees - both of which are free.
  - If a game "is Steamworks", that usually means it offers some or all Steam features and almost always requires a registration with a Steam account, so "Steamworks titles" bought in retail or other download services still require Steam to run. However, technically it's possible for a game to use the Steamworks SDK but isn't actually sold through Steam, as that requires a Steam distribution agreement which gives it advertising space in the Steam store but also provides Valve with a cut. One known "title" which did this was actually the Unreal Developer's Kit (which can now also be downloaded through Steam directly). This makes sense, as all licensees of Epic’s Unreal Engine automatically get Steamworks suite of services as a part of the deal.
  - Don't confuse "Steamworks" with "can be registered on Steam", though. For instance, Unreal Tournament 3 is a fully stand-alone title, which can ALSO be registered on Steam if you input its CD-Key. Same goes for Supreme Commander & its expansion and other titles.
  
• Userdata folder - This folder holds your Steam settings and files which synchronize with the Steam Cloud: savegames (if supported) and all your screenshots. Its subfolders are named after numeric Steam IDs, each user that's ever logged on the current machine/OS install will have one. Each game gets its own subfolder that's named after its Application ID for configs and savegames, while the "760" subfolder holds your screenshots, under /760/remote/<appID>/screenshots.

• SecuROM - It limits the number of PCs activated at the same time from the same key, but does not prevent the user from reselling the product if all activations have been revoked. SecuROM 7.x was the first version to include the SecuROM Removal Tool, which is intended to help users remove SecuROM after the software with which it was installed has been removed. Most titles now also include a revoke tool to deactivate the license; revoking all licenses would restore the original activation limit. As with Windows activation, a hardware change may appear as a change of computer, and force another activation of the software. Reformatting the computer may not consume an activation, if the Product Activation servers successfully detect it as a re-installation on the same set of hardware. The activation limit may be increased, on a case-by-case basis, if the user is shown to have reached this limit due to several hardware-triggered re-activations on the same PC.
  
  
• StarForce / ACTControl - StarForce is a software copy protection mechanism developed by Protection Technology, which claims that products protected with StarForce are difficult to reverse engineer. StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers along with the protected product, which is generally not uninstalled along with the software. Though a removal utility can be downloaded, StarForce has yet to be advertised or provided to users anywhere within protected games. Starting from StarForce 4.0 it includes a removal service. This service automatically uninstalls StarForce drivers after StarForce protected product is uninstalled. After the drivers are uninstalled, the service uninstalls itself as well.There are two confirmed "tiers" of StarForce protection: Basic and Pro, with a Lite version deployed for demos (no drivers are installed). Some gamers have advocated boycotts of games or publishers known to use StarForce. These gamers claim that StarForce software causes system instability and crashes, and that Protection Technology refuses to address the damage their software causes.
  
  
• TAGES / SolidShield – TAGES is a software copy protection system, its method of protection has since been described as twin sectors. It requires to have TAGES drivers installed and they can only be installed with administrator permissions. It provides an official, standalone, device driver installation and uninstallation program. Now it's more widely known for protecting software products for online distribution. Typically, the online activation process of a protected software product is performed on the first execution, with the activation software, TagesClient. TAGES does not, and will not, have a revoke tool. Be careful! Also keep in mind that some games use the DRM's feature to use a time based incremental activation count to re-credit the SN without requiring the end-user to bother about his activation count.
  
  
  
• Uplay - http://uplay.ubi.com - Uplay allows players to connect with other gamers, and to earn rewards similar to trophies/achievements (called "Actions") in Uplay enabled games, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stating that "the more you play, the more free goods you will be able to have". Players must be logged onto Uplay to receive Uplay points and cannot attain them once they gain an achievement before signing into it. It was also a part of the controversial DRM Ubisoft once used, which required you to remain online continually while playing, with the game even pausing if network connection is lost. This made it impossible to play the game offline, to resell it, and meant that should Ubisoft's servers go down, the game would be unplayable. Since some games require you to activate them onto a Uplay account, this is still a problem. Because Ubisoft can and will use various levels of protection for their games, please inform yourself just how anal the protection level is on the game you're about to buy! There was also a huge security exploit potential with how the Uplay browser plugin handled links, which could potentially let rogue websites execute malicious code on your computer. To Ubisoft's credit they patched it really quicky, but if you're conscious about security, you might want to just disable the Uplay browser plugins in whatever browser you're using.
  
  
• Games For Windows Live – http://www.xbox.com - There is a difference between Games for Windows Live and the generic Games for Windows branding. The first is obviously MS's Live system that induces rage and the other is just a label put on PC games (cheers, Hank Morgan). GFWL is an online gaming service for Games for Windows-branded PC titles. If you have a Windows Live ID, you should be able to use those credentials. It connects users, each with a unique Gamertag (similar to Xbox Live), to the Live service which provides online play, keeping track of your friends' status, send and receive messages, gain and keep track of Achievements and associated Gamerscore, voice chat across platforms, and »much more«. Games for Windows – Live is available in 35 countries/territories. Users in other countries can access Live by creating a Gamertag using an address from a supported country, although no technical support is available outside of the supported countries. There's also the option to create an offline profile, but some games require an online one to authenticate. It can have or cause serious technical issues because of faulty updates (so you have to manually patch a game by looking for solutions other players made), having it locked in a perpetual cycle of "must log in" -> "must update" -> "update failed" -> "must log in", profile shenanigans (especially with save games - more on this later) or simply refusing to work. Some users also experience problems with the online multiplayer features. As already mentioned, it can have issues with savegames – some games have had corrupted savegames, plus you cannot move saves between different users (apparently this is by design), and backing up saves is a hassle (you need to dig into /appdata/ or use a save manager). Manually updating GFWL outside of games can solve a lot of the issues, though.
  Note: Some games using GFWL might be using DLC run through it, in which case it's kind of a headache to set up, especially if you bought the DLC on Steam (example: Batman Arkham City). If you bought them on Steam, go to marketplace.xbox.com and sign in there (or sign up, if you don't have an account yet), go to "My Account" on the top right, then "Redeem Code" on the bottom left, type in all your DLC codes. After that it's the same for all the GFWL DLC - you need to download the Games for Windows Marketplace Client, install it, log in with your GFWL credentials, go to the Downloads tab and download, then install the DLC from there. Yyyyyeah...
  Moving Savegames: If you have any savegames you'd like to keep, you can't loving find them anywhere and the game uses GFWL to store them, there's a good chance they're actually hidden in here with the rest of GFWL's files: c:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive. You can move them from installation to installation by backuping and restoring this folder. You just can't move them from a GFWL login to another!
  
  
• Origin / EA Login / EA Classic / Bioware Social - http://store.origin.com - Origin is EA's own Digital Distribution solution and meant as a "response" to Steam (and by response we mean an iterative update to their old EA Download Manager, then EA Downloader and then EA Link, now called Origin). The same login credentials can also be used in some other games EA has published, while "EA Classic" titles can be a bit tricky, since over the years EA have used various login systems and profile management solutions. It's rare, but some games (Warp, Gatling Gears) are on Steam and still "require" Origin - at least at first launch. Electronic Arts like to act it's "in development / in beta" and therefore shouldn't be criticized too heavily yet, but see the previous iterative update history - they're slow to update or add features to their client. However, they are improving it, and unlike a lot of goons would try to tell you, it won't murder your puppy and surprise sex your parents. There's a theory going around that Origin is being pushed as it is because EA wants to get maximum money from selling DLC, and they weren't able to do that with Steam - hence the Crysis 2 / Dragon Age fiasco and drama with Valve. Since some EA/Bioware games, even if they're on Steam, need their DLC bought through Origin or Bioware's DLC system, you sometimes have to buy funny-money Bioware Points or if you got it in a Steam package, redeem a key on Bioware Social or Origin's client. If you're looking where to download Bioware DLC after you've registered it (for, say, Mass Effect 2), here's a "User Entitlements / Your Registered Game Content" page.
  Note: A lot of EA's games on Steam can actually be registered on Origin directly if you can find their CD key (Mirror's Edge is a tricky case because Steam doesn't give you a CD Key for it), or by using the Classic registration links (one, two) for some of the older titles. Also see this article for more help with that.
  
  
• Rockstar Social Club - http://socialclub.rockstargames.com - This is Rockstar's multi-platform "members-only community and destination to enhance and extend your game experience". At first, it was used simply for patch information / notes, Stats tracking and socializing in games like Grand Theft Auto 4 (you could also post video clips through it) and LA Noire (an achievements-like system). It wasn't until Max Payne 3 that they also used it for multiplayer match-making, a grouping/clan system called "Crews" and DLC authentication, thus making it a "requirement" if you own those games, and it's probably going to do the same once GTA 5 hits.
  
  
• GameSpy - http://www.gamespy.com - Strictly speaking, this isn't really DRM, but since some games depends on it for multiplayer functionality, it's included on the list, especially since with some games you get a login prompt after you start it (like Unreal Tournament 3). GameSpy Arcade is the company's flagship matchmaking software, allowing users to find servers for different online video games (whether they be free or purchased) and connect the user to game servers of that game. The company's "Powered by GameSpy" technology has enabled online functionality in over 300 PC and PlayStation 2 games. It's generally considered by goons that with this service, while it's completely functional, you have to "pray that it works" a lot of times and it's basically on the same level as GFWL: "ugh, why". _{Also, almost nobody uses it anymore.}

Tecman fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2012 around 14:49

• Credit / Debit Card: Visa (Visa Electron card are also accepted), Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB
  
• PayPal - https://www.paypal.com
  
• Click and Buy - http://www.clickandbuy.com
  
• Moneybookers - https://www.moneybookers.com
  
• PaySafeCard - http://www.paysafecard.com
  
• WebMoney (list of applicable countries) - http://www.wmtransfer.com
  
• iDeal - http://www.ideal.nl
  
• Sofortüberweisung / DIRECTebanking .com
  
• Russian Terminals / Kiosks
  
• Wallet / In Game Transactions (more about this here)
  
• GameStop Steam Wallet Codes (where to redeem them)
  
• Boleto / BoaCompra

• http://www.amazon.com/Game-Downloads/ - "Steam account required for game activation and installation" - Here's also a thread on Amazon deals & sales!
  
• http://www.greenmangaming.com - "This game requires a free Steam account to play."
  
• http://www.gamefly.co.uk (they swallowed up Direct2Drive) - "3rd Party Download Required"
  
• http://www.gamersgate.com - "DRM:Steamworks (Requires a 3rd party download and account)"
  
• http://www.getgamesgo.com - "STEAM warning icon / This game requires Steam to be installed in your computer."
  
• http://www.impulsedriven.com (now owned by GameStop) - "IMPORTANT NOTICE: This game requires the Steam client to install & play."
  
• http://www.gamesplanet.com - "A Steam account, registration with enclosed serial code and internet connection are required to play."
  
• http://www.dlgamer.com - "Activation Key must be used on a valid Steam account."
  
• http://www.game.co.uk PC Downloads - No indicator.

• GameMaker: Studio - this family of products caters to entry-level novices and seasoned game development professionals equally allowing them to create casual and social games for Steam Workshop (with the Standard version and above), iOS, Android, desktop and the Web (HTML5) in record time and at a fraction of the cost! Speaking of costs, there's the free version, the Standard version and the Professional version. Or you could just get the GameMaker: Studio Master Collection, which is a bundle of all the licenses. But let's be honest here, the app is meant more for novices without some background in programming, since basic assembly can be done by drag-dropping commands. But it's perfect for someone who just wants to create something simple without much foreknowledge on game dev.
  
  If you grab any of the licences (Standard, Pro or Master), you can deploy what you make straight onto Steam Workshop, or if you're not into that, you could browse what other people have made here. Oh, and the thing actually has 24 achievements for stuff like debugging, running your app etc...
  
  
  
• Source Filmmaker - The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the movie-making tool built and used by us here at Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. Because the SFM uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By utilizing the hardware rendering power of a modern gaming PC, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment so they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience.
  
  To get started, just click the button above to install. The SFM includes all the base game assets from Team Fortress 2 along with assets from some of the first “Meet the Team” short films. Once you're up and running, here are some general resources for finding help and learning how to get the most out of the Source Filmmaker.
  Official Wiki Documentation
  Frequently Asked Questions
  Video Tutorials
  Community Discussions
  How to file bug reports

• Daily Deal - 24-hour deals with varying levels of savings / how lovely the game is.
  
• Week Long Deal - the newest kind of deals, lasts Monday to Monday.
  
• Midweek Madness - these deals last from Monday to Thursday, they aren't limited to one game or a game-pack, so you can have multiple Midweek Madness deals.
  
• Weekend Deal - these deals last from Thursday to Monday, they aren't limited to one game or a game-pack, so you can have multiple Weekend deals.
  
• Free Weekend - these can either augment or replace Weekend Deals, where a game (and sometimes its DLC) goes on sale, yet is freely downloadable to anyone for that weekend only.

• July 12th through July 23rd, 2012: Gimmick: Earn Badges for your Steam ID by doing various tasks (using Steam features, voting), random Flash Sales every 8 hours plus you could vote for Community Picks every 8 hours as well.
  
• June 30th through July 10th, 2011: Gimmick: Earn Lottery Tickets by completing specific in-game achievements; redeem 3 tickets for an immediate prize, with a Grand Prize (the first ten games on your wishlist) drawing at the end of the sale from any leftover tickets you might have had.
  
• June 24th through July 4th, 2010: "Perils of Summer" Sale, Gimmick: none, really.

• December 19, 2011 through January 1, 2012: Gimmick: Earn coupons, games or "coal" by completing specific in-game achievements; "coal" was used as entries in a contest where one lucky participant won the entire Steam library of games.
  
• December 20th, 2010 through January 2nd, 2011: Gimmick: none, really.

• Put the amount of money you can afford AND NO MORE* into your steam wallet, before the sales starts. You don't want your card being knocked back when you try and buy that Nancy Drew game you've been waiting for with 5 minutes on the sale clock.
  _{* Unless you are from and area that gets screwed by regional pricing a lot (eg. Australia). Put that sweet cash in your paypal, and you'll be sending off cash to one of our many regional gifters in no time, with no fuss!}
  
• If the game is on a daily deal, chances are it won't get and cheaper. So snap that up.
  
• On the other hand. If the game isn't on daily and you really want it, show some restraint and wait until the last day. If it hasn't gone on a daily deal before the last day, chances are it wont get any cheaper.
  
• Look to organize 2 or 4 packs where possible. It can often save you and your fellow goons a good sum of cash.
  
• ALWAYS check http://www.steamprices.com for the best deal. You can often save yourself a good wad of cash by using one of a many helpful regional gifters! Also, don't be afraid to ask for help getting the best deal. And tip your gifter if you can afford it!

• General Account Questions, Account Creation and Management
  
• Billing - General, Refunds and Returns, Trading and Gifting
  
• Errors and Crashes, Game Installation Issues, Game Performance
  
• Valve Games, 3rd Party Games
  
• Troubleshooting, Mac Issues, Linux Issues, How To's
  
• Browse Steam Glossary

• Advanced Steam Components
  
• Installing Steam (includes videos), Moving a Steam Installation and Games
  
• I see "This game is currently unavailable" when launching a game through Steam. What can I do?
  
• Windows 7 and Vista Troubleshooting
  
• Programs Which May Interfere with Steam
  
• Using a Router with Steam, Required Ports for Steam
  
• Using a Firewall with Steam
  
• Troubleshooting Network Connectivity
  
• Providing Proof of Purchase when submitting a support ticket
  
• Reclaiming a Hijacked Steam Account
  
• Trading, Gifts, Inventory & Scamming
  
• How does the Extra Copy Special Offer work?
  
• My Steam account is missing some Community features and/or is showing up as a limited user. What does this mean?

Tecman fucked around with this message at Feb 18, 2013 around 18:51

• Open your Friends list, located in the lower right hand corner of the Steam client
  
• Click on the small arrow next to the friend you wish to invite to Trade and click on Invite to Trade. Alternatively, if you are chatting with your friend you can start a trade from the chat window by clicking on the large arrow and selecting Invite to Trade.
  
• Once accepted the trade window will appear where you can view your items, games, and coupons available to trade.
  
• Select the appropriate backpack you wish to view from the dropdown menu on the left
  
• Click and drag the item, game, or coupon you wish to trade from your backpack to your trade window. If you wish to remove an item, game, or coupon simply drag it back to your backpack from the trade window.
  
• Click on Ready to Trade and wait for the other party to click on Ready to Trade.
  
• Verify the contents of the trade are correct by hovering your mouse over each item and reading the item details.
  
• Click on Make Trade - Once you click this button the trade cannot be undone!
  
• The trade will finish processing and you will receive a confirmation window with what items, games, or coupons you received in the trade.

Tecman fucked around with this message at Jan 1, 2013 around 12:28

• Create your own individual user profile.
  
• See your friends online, chat or join servers where they are playing.
  
• Create and join groups of players with similar interests.
  
• Track gameplay statistics and achievements where available
  
• Schedule group events.
  
• Access Steam from within any game using the Game Overlay system.
  
• Voice chat in-game or out.

• Profile Tab - Allows you to edit how you appear to the Steam Community at large. You will be able to edit your Steam Community Profile name/persona and customize your profile URL, Location, Avatar Image and up to three web links.
  
• Groups Tab - Allows you to edit your Primary Community Group to display on the front of your Profile page.
  
• Settings Tab - Adjust your privacy settings and comment permissions
  
• Invites - Accept or decline friend and group invites coming from other Steam Community users.
  
• Upcoming Events - lists upcoming events set in your group calendars.
  
• Groups - Allows you to quickly jump to any of your groups to see what’s happening in the community.
  
• Gameplay Stats - Gives you a quick glance at what you’ve been doing with your time.
  
• Friends - Shows you who is online, what games they are currently playing, and lets you quickly join them or start chatting, among other things.

• Everything in one place - Now all of the community and official game content lives together on the Game Hub: Screenshots, videos, workshop items, news, and discussions are all easily accessible
  
• Discussions - Each Hub has a Discussions tab so now you can talk about your favorite games without diving into the Steam Forums.
  
• Curated by players - The most popular content as rated by you and other community members floats to the top of the Hub. So it’s easy to see what’s currently the best and most active.
  
• Every game has a hub - Think of it as the flip side of the Store. Every game on Steam has a hub to show off the latest news and what’s going on in the community.

• New layout - The revamped groups layout makes it easier to see what a group is really about, who’s in it, and what they’ve been up to recently. We’ve added a group overview, friend showcase, and more.
  
• Group Discussions - Most significantly, each group will now have their own discussions area, enabling public and private discussions within the group. You get complete moderator control over your group forums, with the ability to create sub-forums, add moderators, delete posts, etc.
  
• More Personalized - Each group can now proudly list their favorite games for others to find. You can also set the default language for the group.

• My image wall - The screenshots page will have a couple of different viewing options now, with a new layout that makes your finest gaming moments look like a work of art.
  
• In one place - Whether you take screenshots, replays, link videos from YouTube, publish from SFM, upload Workshop Items, or create Workshop Collections, all of your content is easily accessible from your profile.
  
• Favorites - Found a cool screenshot, video, or workshop item? Now you can favorite them so you can find them later and share them with your friends.

• New friend activity - See what your Friends are up to in the new visually rich and more interactive feed where nearly everything can be rated and commented on. Share your opinion, taunt or help your friends, save the best content to your favorites, and rate up (heh, "like" them, heh) your friends’ content to get them to the top of the Game Hubs, or rate them down because their tits and rear end shots from videogames are loving old (unless it's from Saints Row The Third and also includes very silly things) or how nobody cares about their highscore or sweet killshots bragging. Oh, it also shows you which games your friends have recently bought.
  
• Post a status - Finally make it past that boss-level and, because Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook aren't enough, have an OCD need to loving tell everyone? Need opinions on a game purchase? Post a status to your feed and tag it with any game for bragging rights or just to start a conversation.
  
• Nicknames - Now you can nickname your friends so you know who they are even if they change their profile name. Holy loving poo poo, this is so useful if you have a large friends list full of jackasses that change their profile names constantly.

• Profile backgrounds - Customize your profile with a background image.
  
• Coupons - You might earn game or DLC coupons.
  
• Emoticons - Steam emoticons can be used anywhere on Steam where you can type, like chat, discussions, and profiles.
  
• Profile Showcases - Choose what you want to show off. What’s unique about you? Based on your Steam Level you can customize your profile with showcases. Show off your favorite games, items up for trade, workshop mods, Greenlight submissions, or maybe your favorite screenshots...Steam emoticons can be used anywhere on Steam where you can type, like chat, discussions, and profiles.

• SA Goons
  This is the "official" Steam Group for Something Awful goons. If you want to join the group, go post in this thread for an invite. The thread is also where a lot of goons post their Steam ID URLs if you want to make new random friends who post on the same Forums on the Internet as you!
  
• SA Public, Something Awful
  They're somewhat similar to the above group, except anybody can join. Meaning that pubbies can join without problems, making the groups utterly useless for any authentication stuff. Still, nothing wrong with joining them as well.
  
• SA Classical Gamers
  Dig out your old games. Just a group to help organize some multiplayer sessions for some classic games.
  
• Goon Backlog Group
  We are no longer rich, so we play games we bought previously. Anyone who wants to join us is welcome, and is encouraged to post experiences on SA.
  
• Knifeback Mountain UK and Europe Steam community
  Knifeback started out in September 2007 as "UK Goons", and over time became the main Euro goon TF2 community. In July 2009, the group was renamed after its TF2 server - Knifeback Mountain. Since then, the group has started hosting and playing a bunch of other games, and the focus has shifted more to events and stuff people organise together on Mumble.
  
• Australian/NewZealand Steam group: Ausgoons
  For those who are curious we play more than just TF2 these days, join chat if you want to join in for any of the following: TF2, CS:S, Borderlands, Starcraft 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Alien Swarm, Left4Dead 2 and other random flavour of the month games.
  
• Goon Vs. Machine: The TF2 Co-Op Steam Group
  Alright folks, if Killing Floor has taught us anything about playing Co-Op games like these, it's that they're best played with other goons. That being said, welcome to the Goon Group for TF2's new Co-Op Mode, Mann Vs. Machine. More information about this group, including the group URL, can be found in this thread.
  
• [TF2] The Lost Continents: Autistic/Creepy Troll Zone
  Here we go again. Let's try to follow basic forum rules and keep stupid edrama out of this thread. If you have problems or useful suggestions feel free to post in this thread otherwise expect to be banned/probated for posting non-lc related stuff. Oh, and a link to the Steam group itself.
  
• [Battlefield 3] WookWook - Battlefield 3 Dallas Servers and Mumble
  WookWook will be running three 64 player servers at launch. Hadlock will post their battlelog links in the thread (and new BF3 thread once it's unlocked) when that information becomes available. You should also be able to search for them using the battlelog server browser as well. More about the servers in the thread itself. Here's also the Steam group.

• Age of Empires 2 HD - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/aoe2goons
  
• AI Wars: Fleet Command - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/AWGC
  
• Alien Swarm - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/alienswarmgoons
  
• Alien VS Predator - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonsversuspredator
  
• Anno / Dawn of Discovery Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/AnnoGoons
  
• Anno 2070 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goons2070
  
• ARMA: Cold War Assault / Operation Flashpoint - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ofpgoons
  
• ARMA II - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/arma2goons
  
• Bad Rats - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/teambadrats , http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BRKK
  
• Battlefield Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/battlefieldgoons
  
• Battlefield 3 (Wook Wook servers) - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/WookWook
  
• Binary Domain - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goondomain
  
• Bloody Good Time - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bloodygoontime
  
• Borderlands - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bordergoons , http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BorderGoons2011SS
  
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/blOOPS_sux
  
• Dark Souls - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dasgoonspc
  
• Day Z - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dayzgoons
  
• Dead Island - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonisland
  
• Dead Rising 2 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Dead-Rising-2-Goons
  
• Demigod - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonmiss
  
• Diablo Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/diablogoons
  
• Duke Nukem Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dukesbros
  
• Dungeon Defenders - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dungoons
  
• Endless Space - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/endless_goons
  
• Firefall - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/firefallgoons
  
• Garry's Mod - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GG
  
• Guild Wars - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/guildwarsgoons
  
• Iron Grip: Warlords - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/irongripgoonlords
  
• Killing Floor - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GoonsontheKillingFloor
  
• Left 4 Dead Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Goon4Dead
  
• Magic the Gathering Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonmagic
  
• Magical Diary - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/magicalgoondiary
  
• Magicka - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/MagickaGoons
  
• Max Payne 3 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SADali
  
• Monday Night Combat Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goondaynightcombat
  
• Mount & Blade Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Couchdatlance
  
• Natural Selection 2 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ns2goons
  
• Nexuiz - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NexuizGoons
  
• Payday: The Heist - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonsth
  
• Portal Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/PortalGoons
  
• Primal Carnage - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/primalgoonage
  
• Railworks Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonrailworks
  
• Realm of the Mad God - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/RotMGoons
  
• Renegade Ops - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/renegoonops
  
• Resident Evil - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Goonhazard
  
• Ricochet - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goondd
  
• Sanctum - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SanctumGoons
  
• Section 8: Prejudice - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Goon8
  
• Serious Sam Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SeriousGoons
  
• Sonic Racing Transformed - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SRTGoons
  
• Stellar Impact - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GoonImpact
  
• Street Fighter 4 - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonfighter4
  
• Super Monday Night Combat - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/smncsa
  
• Sword of the Stars Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonsots
  
• Terraria - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/terrargoon
  
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/FoCSA
  
• Transformice - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GoonM
  
• Tribes: Ascend - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tribesgoons
  
• Torchlight Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/torchgoons
  
• Total War Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GoonsTotalWar
  
• Unreal Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/unrealgoons
  
• Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dawngoons
  
• Warhammer 40000: Space Marine - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/GoonMarine
  
• Worms Series - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonswhathaveworms , http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goonworms
  
• X3: Terran Conflict - http://steamcommunity.com/groups/x3tc
  
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown - http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...hreadid=3509602

Tecman fucked around with this message at May 20, 2013 around 09:57

• Blocks That Matter - Store page - Hub Page - View all entries - View Instructions
  
• Colour Bind - Store page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Dota 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Dungeon Defenders - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Dungeons of Dredmor - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Fireburst - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries
  
• Garry's Mod - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Killing Floor - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Kung Fu Strike - The Warrior's Rise - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries
  
• Legend of Grimrock - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Natural Selection 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Naval War Arctic Circle - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Nexuiz - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries
  
• Nuclear Dawn - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Portal 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Red Orchestra 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Scribblenauts Unlimited - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries
  
• Serious Sam 3: BFE - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Sid Meier's Civilization V - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries
  
• Team Fortress 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions
  
• Train Simulator 2013 - Store Page - Hub Page - View all entries - View instructions

• GameMaker: Studio - You need to own a paid version to be able to publish anything! - Store Pages for the Standard and Professional Edition - View all entries

• I know of a game that should be here. What do I do? - Go contact the game developer and suggest that they submit their game here for consideration.
  
• There's a game on Greenlight that I really want to see succeed. What can I do? - Go tell your friends; just don't be annoying about it.
  
• How do I report a fake/fraudulent/malicious game in Greenlight? - When you're looking at the page for a game in Greenlight, there is a 'Report' right next to the rating buttons, below the screenshots. Please report the item and tell us why you're doing so.
  
• You can start the voting process here. You'll be able to view a queue of ten items to vote on, customize it to specifically fit your needs (selecting a few genres that you are most interested in) or generate a new one once you're done or you dislike the current queue altogether.
  
• The system keeps track of what you've already voted and what you haven't yet. You can also add titles into your favorites list, view which items your Friends have Favorited or create your own Collection.

• You can submit your game using this form.
  
• To get started, you'll need to pay a one-time $100 submission fee to grant your Steam account access to post and update games within Greenlight. All proceeds from this fee (minus taxes) will be donated directly to Child's Play, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of children in over 70 hospitals worldwide. This one-time fee will grant your Steam account access to post and update as many of your games as you like within Greenlight.
  
• Are there any restrictions on what can be posted? - Your game must not contain offensive material or violate copyright or intellectual property rights.
  
• Each listing in Steam Greenlight now has a dedicated discussion area where fans can ask questions, post feedback, and start conversations around the game.
  
• Developers can now see a graph showing their up-vote traffic for each day of the past week, and compare it with the average votes for top-ranked games. This is an example.
  
• For games in the Top 100 ranking, devs now see their specific numerical ranking. For games below the top 100, they see their progress toward top 100.
  
• Developers of games or software that are early in their development or creative process can now post their early work to start building a community and getting feedback from prospective customers. Concepts can be posted for free, but the voting on these items serves only to give the developer data and feedback and does not lead toward getting the game distributed on Steam.
  
• You can add other people as representatives of your project / contributors that can post, reply, and help moderate the comments and discussions on your Steam Greenlight submission.

• OS - Windows Vista, 7, or 8. Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or newer.
  
• Memory - 1 GB RAM
  
• Processor - 3.0 Ghz P4, Dual Core 2.0 (or higher) or AMD64X2 (or higher)
  
• Video card - Required / at least 256MB memory and DirectX 9-compatible with support for Pixel Shader 2.0b, Recommended / 512MB+ memory and DirectX 10-compatible
  
• Disk space - 1 GB recommended
  
• Internet connection - Broadband recommended
  
• Controller - Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows, Xbox 360 Wired Controller, or Logitech Wireless Gamepad F710 recommended. Keyboard and mouse also supported. Other controllers now work too!
  

• A Dedicated PC or Mac - This is probably the easiest way to get Big Picture up and running. Simply connect a PC to your living room TV via the HDMI cable mentioned above. Done! For a living-room gaming computer, some obvious desirable features (aside from good performance) are low-noise, small size, good USB connectivity, on-board WiFi, and a decent case design. As they become aware of machines which fit this overall profile, Valve will add information about them here.
  
• A Laptop - Many of the latest generation laptops come equipped with a discrete graphics card capable of meeting Big Picture’s requirements. If your laptop instead has an “integrated” graphics solution, it’s unlikely to deliver performance that you’ll consider satisfactory with Big Picture. (There may be exceptions - we have not exhaustively tested with a full range of laptops to determine how they’ll all perform.) As for connecting to your TV, more and more laptops of recent manufacture have an onboard HDMI connection, making the connection to most HD televisions a snap. (See one-cable setup, above.) If yours doesn’t, it’s still likely that you can use Big Picture with a different cabling setup (DVI, or even VGA), but unlike HDMI you’ll have to connect sound separately.
  
• Your Existing Desktop Computer - There are some really interesting solutions on the market that allow you to use your TV as a secondary monitor for your desktop PC - without even having to move it from the desk. The most interesting solutions are wireless. This kind of technology is still evolving, but solid products have already been on the market for a year or two. We have had good luck with devices based on the technology from Amimon, when used within the same room. Whole-house solutions (which transmit through multiple walls) are beginning to appear on the market - if you have experience with one of those we’d like to hear about it. One industry standard is called WHDI, and there are several such devices available today.

• Use Big Picture *without* a TV - Although Big Picture was designed with TVs in mind, there’s no reason you can’t use it with your usual Steam setup. For best results, plug in a controller, lean back in your chair, and go!

• 1 GHz Pentium 4 or Athlon XP1500+ with 512 megabytes of RAM, or better
  
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, fully updated
  
• A recent model graphics card:
  - NVIDIA series 6 and newer
  - Intel HD 3000 or better
  - AMD series 5 and up
  
• At least 5G free hard drive space (more if you want to play games!)

• Download the Steam Client.
  
• Navigate to the location you saved the steam.deb file and double-click to launch the installer.
  
• Ubuntu Software Center will launch and walk you through installation.
  

Tecman fucked around with this message at May 20, 2013 around 09:59

• Highlights the games and downloadable content you already own
  
• Highlights games on your wishlist
  
• Points out 3rd party DRM on games
  
• Adds DLC categories to the product page
  
• Finds out how much you really save on a bundle
  
• See pricing history for each game
  
• See how much you've spent on your Steam account
  
• Fixes the "No Image Available" images on your wishlist
  
• Displays Metacritic user scores
  
• Adds an "Add to Cart" button on your wishlist items
  
• Adds an "Empty Cart" button to checkout
  
• Enhances the Steam Community pages
  
• User-controlled options page lets you decide which features to enable
  

"menubar" // don't touch this
{
	MenuBarEntry  // the internal name for the menu, not what you actually see
	{
		text = [!$OSX]	"Your Menu's Name"	// the name you'll see in the Windows client
		text = [$OSX]	"Your Menu's Name"   // the name you'll see in the Mac client

		MenuCommandInternalName	{	
			text="The Name Which Will Show Up" // the name for the menu item
 			shellcmd="steam://openurl/http://www.put_an_url_here.com" // the url for the item
		}  
		Divider	{}   // will make a divider element, just like under say View -> Downloads
	}
}

friends_chat_self
	{
		textcolor="Friends.OnlineColor"
		selectedtextcolor="TextentrySelected"	
		selectedbgcolor="focus"
		font-size=14
	}

• Top Rip-offs - Shows you which games have the biggest pricing differences. It's usually what the website is used for – finding out which games you shouldn't buy yourself and should instead ask for help from a goon living in a region where it's cheaper.
  
• Fair-Priced – Shows you which games are about the same price in other regions as well as your own.
  
• Top Savings – Shows you which games are best bought in your own region, or which titles you could buy for other goons to help them out.
  
• Discounts – Shows you the current Current Steam Deals and Specials, except it gives you multiple region prices.
  
• Price Tracker – One of the most useful features of the website. Using this you can see if any games have gotten a price drop without it going on sale.
  
• New on Steam – Mirrors the »New Releases« list from Steam, except it gives you multiple region prices.
  
• Upcoming – Mirrors the »Coming Soon« list from Steam, except it gives you multiple region prices. Useful for planning ahead if you want to pre-order any title.
  
• Not available – Gives you a list of games / DLC / guides which you cannot buy from your own store for whatever reason. These are the titles where you'd HAVE to ask one of the gifters from the OP to help you out if you'd want to buy them. Naturally, you're kind of screwed if the title in question is Free 2 Play.
  
• Search by feature – Lets you list games by specific features it has, for example if it's Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Co-Op, Local Co-Op, if it has Steam Achievements or Leaderboards, if it uses Steam Cloud, etc...

• Don't enter for games you already own. Don't trade, sell, resubmit, or give away games you win.
  
• Do not ask for any sort of payment/exchange in order to enter a giveaway. This applies to group rules as well.
  
• Do not link to any referral programs.
  
• The submitter and winner(s) of the giveaway have seven (7) days to complete the gifting process. This includes the activation of the gift on the Steam account of the winner.
  
• Do not submit guest passes, beta keys (Dota 2 and CS:GO giftable copies whitelisted), or in-game items from games such as TF2.

Tecman fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2013 around 13:01

• You can find your purchasing history if you click on your account name in the upper right corner - Licenses and subscriptions shows a history of your games, whereas Store Transactions shows a history of your purchases (this includes gifts to others).
  
• Be careful when purchasing off third-party websites. You have to be sure they're not shady (see the "endorsed" list), but also to make sure they're Steamworks / can be added to Steam if that's what you want. Amazon usually says something like "Requires Steam account for game installation and activation" when listing such a game, but always keep an eye out for "Requires Steam" or "3rd Party Software Needed: Steam". If in doubt, ask in here, the list on Valve's support site (while still a good resource) actually isn't complete and can have outdated or erroneous info.

• If you want to register a CD Key, there is a big "Add a Game..." button on the bottom left corner and selecting "Activate a Product on Steam..." - the same option can be found on the top menu under "Games".
  
• If you want to add a "shortcut" to a non-Steam game into your games Library, use the "Add a Game..." button on the bottom left corner and select "Add a Non-Steam Game...", the same option can be found on the top menu under "Games" - be warned that Steam likes to "forget" both your shortcuts and your personal game categories from time to time due to a bug. In order to prevent that from happening:
  - For shortcuts, after you've added them all, make a backup of the file "..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\config\shortcuts.vdf and have it handy so you can revert to it.
  - For categories, after you've built them as you wish, make a backup of the file "..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\7\remote\sharedconfig.vdf" and have it handy so you can revert to it.
  
• You can edit the shortcuts by right-clicking them in your Library and selecting Properties. There, you can change its name, path to the executable you're linking to (Target) and the folder the executable will run in (Start In), which sometimes needs to be changed. The "Change" button lets you re-pick the .exe or you can manually type in the paths.
  
• Changing the icons to your custom-made shortcuts is done the same way as editing them. The "Choose Icon" button will let you pick an executable from which Steam will grab its icon. For some reason, choosing .ico files doesn't work.
  
• If you have a key code from the Original Half Life back when Sierra released the first boxed version on CD-Rom, or a GOTY box, enter the key into Steam. It will give you the Half-Life 1 Platinum pack with all the addons.

• Downloading is easy - you'll be given an option to do so upon purchase, or just double-click its name in the library, or right-click the entry and select "Install Game". Removing them is done with right-clicking and selecting "Delete Local Content...".
  
• To resume a download after launching a game and having it download while you're playing, Alt-Tab out of the game and manually resume under the Downloads mode in your Library (or by clicking the "X Items Downloading" / "X Items Paused" / "X Items Complete" text on the bottom).
  
• If the downloads are being slow, you could try changing the servers you're downloading from by changing your region: go under View -> Settings -> Download + Cloud -> Download Region.
  
• If the download stops for any reason and then resumes, don't worry about it - the percentage by hovering over the Steam Tray icon is showing for files remaining, not files total. Under the Download view (see above how to get to it) you can see the total filesize. Also take note between "Downloading" and "Updating" for when to freak out about Steam om-nom-noming your files.
  
• It's now actually much faster to start the download to a lot of games at once by doing it remotely (bypassing all the "right-click game, install game, go through the prompts, wait for it to start" cycles for each), so be logged into Steam via the Client on the computer you want to do the downloads on, then log into the Steam Community via the website with your credentials, then on your Community Home (or your Steam ID's profile page) click on "Games", then "All Games" and just click on all the Download icons - no prompts, no hassle, and the Client should pick up on your requests immediately. The downside to this is that it won't create any icons or links - just a quick way to install all your poo poo and sort out those later manually (thanks, user and Palpek).
  
• If you're in the Beta, Steam lets you install to multiple hard drives now - you specify Steam Library Folders under View -> Settings -> Downloads + Cloud tab -> Steam Library Folders. There, you can add or remove Library folders on any of your drives, and when you create one it builds a subfolder system just like in the Steam main folder: it puts a steam.dll in the folder, then builds a "steamapps" subfolder with "common", "downloading" and "temp" subfolders once you start installing games into it.

• Starting your games can be done in a lot of ways. Either you 1) keep desktop shortcuts of them when you install them / manually create by right-clicking on a game in your Library and selecting Create Dekstop Shortcut, 2) you use the Start Menu shortcuts which were made if you selected the option while Installing/Downloading a game (it'll be under the Steam folder in the Start Menu), 3) you use the Library feature of Steam (later on all the possible views it offers) and either double-click on them or right-click and select "Play game...", 4) you use Steam in Small Mode (View -> Small mode) and run them through that, 5) you use Big Picture Mode and run them through that, 6) you're so hardcore, you run them through a custom-written-and-designed html list of all the links/ids in the "steam://rungameid/<id_num>" format according to your personal categories setup. Uh, okay...?
  
• Are your Steam games desktop / shortcut icons missing? You need to trick Windows into resetting the icon association in its icon cache. If you're using Windows XP, use TweakUI (download it from here) to reset the icon cache (repair-->rebuild icon cache). If you're using Vista or 7, delete "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\IconCache.db" and reboot. Try it. Thanks, eydeeb! Another, much more complicated solution can be found here.

• The offline feature in Steam tends to work best when you know you'll lose your network connection and can manually put it in offline mode. If you leave Steam to detect that it's offline on its own, it has a history of loving up. SUPPOSEDLY this is now fixed.
  
• When Steam is started and shut down, it modifies a cache file to note that fact. If you don't close Steam down properly, the shutdown modification doesn't happen, causing Steam to try and fix the file using an internet connection. As long as you always exit Steam manually (ie. you don't Shut Down your computer without exiting it first, and you don't kill it in Task Manager) you'll always be able to access offline mode. Read more about it here.

• You can actually search your library much faster if you click where it says Search next to the hourglass icon and start typing.
  
• There are multiple modes to view your library in. On the top underneath Library you have some options: "All Games", "All Software" "Recently Played", "Installed" and "Favorites".
  
• There are also multiple views. Look to your right, next to View: "Detail View" (), "List View" () and "Grid View" ().
  
• In Detail View, you can actually turn Icons on and off by finding the "+" icon () to the right of the topmost game entry in your library and left-clicking that - just check and un-check the "Icons" option.
  
• In List View, you can swap between Icons (tiny 16x16 pixel images) and Images (120x45 pixel images) for your games list by right-clicking anywhere on the top bar (the one that has Games / a Star icon for Favorites / a little cloud icon for Steam Cloud / Status / Metascore / Developer / Last Played) and check the corresponding option. You cannot use both options at the same time, but you can turn both of them off by un-checking the already checked one.
  
• If you're using the Grid View:
  - you can resize the size of the graphic boxes for the games by sliding the Zoom ruler on the top right, next to view.
  - you can now use custom game images for that. Right-click on any of the game icons and select "Set Custom Image".
  
• If you're looking for your CD Key, right-click on a game in the Library and select "View Game CD Key". You need to start installing/downloading the game first to see this option if you haven't installed it yet - you can bypass this requirement by using Detail View and selecting "CD Key" to your right. This option might also show DLC keys.
  
• You can see what DLC you own for a game by right-clicking a game in the Library and selecting "View Downloadable Content". In Detail View, you can see the link (if it exists) to your right under DLC. The easiest way to see which DLCs you already own for a game (if there are a ton of them) is to use the "Add All DLC To Cart" option on the game's Store Page under the DLC section. If you don't see the button, click "See All" first to expand all the DLC. You'll have to manually remove each DLC from the cart, tho!
  
• You can add or remove games to your Favorites category by right-clicking and selecting "Add To Favorites" and "Remove From Favorites" - in List View you can also just click the star which appears if you hover over the intersection of the game's name and the star icon on the top bar, between the Games text the Steam Cloud icon / Status text. If you don't see a Star icon on the top, right-click anywhere on the top bar and check Favorites.
  
• You can set custom categories besides "Favorites" by right-clicking on a game in the Library and selecting "Set Category". In Detail View, you can see the link to your right under "Set Category..." - this view also shows you which categories the game is under.

• You can manually enable and disable the In-Game Community (the overlay) for each game by ticking and unticking the option under General -> Enable Steam Community In-Game.
  
• If you're looking for something that's like typing additional parameters under Target in Windows' Properties/Shortcut for an icon (like, say, -windowed), you use the "Set Launch Options..." button under General. Just type the commands in there.
  
• You can view a game's update history through its Properties as well - there's a link in the Updates tab.
  
• There is a "Do not automatically update this game" option under the Updates tab - This does not actually set it so that a game is never updated ; instead it tells Steam to only update a game when you try to launch it! Updates / Patches are mandatory on Steam! The only way to kind of bypass this is to use Offline mode all the time you want to play a game you don't want to have patched / updated, and to keep a copy of the unpatched files for when the Offline mode inevitably breaks / Steam forgets you have "Do not automatically update this game" while you're online playing other games and updates the drat thing anyway.
  
• You can backup a game using Steam's "Backup Game Files..." option in the Local Files tab - I do not recommend you use this! Manually back up any files under ..Steam\steamapps\<game folder name> instead, since there's less chance for any corruption issues!
  
• If you're having problems with your game, you might want to use the "Verify Integrity Of Game Cache..." feature under the Local Files tab in case a file got corrupted or failed to download - this will force Steam go compare the files on your system to the files you're "supposed" to have and then re-download the mis-matched ones, or any that are missing. This can potentially break mods!
  
• There's an option to "Defragment Cache Files" in the the Local Files tab - what this actually does is defragment the .ncf and .gcf files under ..Steam\steamapps\ and a lot of games only use those for trivial things - you're not actually defragging your game in a lot of cases! Instead, get a defrag utility like Defraggler and manually point the application to the game's folder you want to Defrag and let it work its magic.
  Note from Grawl: You're an idiot if you run [a defragging app] on a SSD drive, since it'll wear out faster and it doesn't matter one bit because there's no moving parts.
  
• If a game supports multiple languages (easiest way to see if it does is to look on its Store Page), you can set the active language under the Language tab - Steam will download any required voice files and such on demand.

• To reach your Steam Profile (sometimes also referred to as your "Steam ID"), you can either go under My Profile -> My Profile, or click on the big Community text and then switch from Friends to Profile, click on your Avatar picture on the bottom-right of your main Steam window (this can change depending which skin you're using), click on your Avatar picture in your Friends list on top, go to the top right corner and click on the "<your_login_name>'s Account" text and select View Profile, or you could go under Community -> Friends, then somewhere to the right where you see your name, avatar and a lot of links, click "View my Profile". If you haven't set one, it's going to be a huge and long mess of characters.
  
• To edit your profile, you should have an "Edit my Profile" link whenever you reach it, and you're logged into Steam Community either through the client or the website. Here, under:
  - the Profile tab, you can set your Profile Name (same as changing your profile name in Settings), your Real Name (or a joke one), some sort of Headline, a Summary where you can put some dumb text about yourself, your custom URL so it's much easier to remember your Steamcommunity URL, the Country you're from and what State/Province (or in some cases, city) you're from and pick your avatar where you can upload a pic or pick from existing ones (official Groups have these pre-made). Here you can also link a Facebook profile if you want to (increasing your max friends from 250 to 300) and add up to 3 website URLs by specifying their title and URL for each of them.
  - the Groups tab, you can select your Primary group from a list of Groups you're a member of, so it will show up first in your list under your profile with a bigger image and the group's description.
  - the Settings tab, you can set your Profile Status (Private - Only you can view your profile page, Friends Only - Only viewable by your friends, Friends of Friends - Viewable by your friends and their friends, too, Users Only - Viewable by any logged-in Steam user, Public - Viewable by anyone on the World-Wide Web), Comment Permissions (Private - No one can leave comments except for you, Friends Only - Only your friends can leave comments, Public - Anyone can leave comments) and Inventory (Private - Only you can view your inventory, Friends Only - Only viewable by your friends, Friends of Friends - Viewable by your friends and their friends, too, Users Only - Viewable by any logged-in Steam user, Public - Viewable by anyone on the World-Wide Web). You can also make your Steam Gift inventory private at all times.
  
• If you're going to be using a custom Avatar, your best bet is to upload a 184 x 184 pixels image that's under 200k. File type doesn't seem to matter much, although animated images aren't supported (it'll take the first frame).
  
• Clicking on either "View and search all <x> games" or Games (<x>) on someone's profile will show you a new window with four tabs, with the "Recently Played" one being active. Here, you can get a list of Links like visiting its Store page, visit its Forums, find its Community groups, visit its official website and find its related news. You can view the game's stats, either the global ones or the stats of the person whose profile you're looking at. You can also recommend the games in the list by using the button. Switching to the "All Games" tab will show you that person's list of games (sometimes DLC also has its own entry), where you can sort the games according to total Playtime or alphabetically - this page also has the Links / View Stats / Recommend options. The Wishlist tab lets you see which games this person has added to his or her wishlist, where you can sort the list by Rank (each user can rank the games in their own list, putting the stuff they want most on top), Date Added, Name and Price. If this is YOUR wishlist, you can also edit it - either by dragging the games up and down to change their ranking or to type in the ranking number manually. Don't forget to Save when you're done! The last tab is Recommended, where you can see this person's recommendations and where you can comment on them.

• Screenshots can only be uploaded to your profile / Cloud storage through the Overlay's F12 screenshot-taking feature. Okay, that's not entirely true, since you can do a bit of editing and overwrite those files to upload custom poo poo of whatever you want. Usually you'll get a window pop up after you've stopped playing a game if you've taken any screenshots, from which you can upload them (with the option to publish them via Facebook if you want to, although you can only do that if you upload one picture at a time). I'm not completely sure, but I think the current limit is 2gb of Cloud storage per account, while it used to be 1gb.
  
• Your Screenshots are located under ..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\760\remote\ where each subfolder is named after a game's id - so for instance, Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Store Page is http://store.steampowered.com/app/28050/ - so its screenshots will be in ..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\760\remote\28050\screenshots\. If the screenshots are from something that isn't on Steam, it will get assigned a random numbers folder, the number of which will be much bigger than the game's id number.
  
• I mentioned editing earlier - a lot of POTENTIALLY DEVASTATING manual tinkering can be done with the ..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\760\screenshots.vdf file. For instance, I used some editing of this file to solve an issue where some screenshot wouldn't upload anymore because "they were already there", except I could never access them online again - so I changed the filenames to my screenshots within the game's screenshots folder, then edited in the references to these new files so they'd show up in the manager. AGAIN, DON'T gently caress WITH THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!
  
• If you want to manage your (online) Screenshots at anytime, use the Screenshots link on your profile, or use the My Profile -> My Screenshots option. If you want to organize your OFFLINE screenshots (via the Screenshot Manager), you have to either use the Steam icon in the system tray (bottom right of your screen), right-click it and select Screenshots, which will pop open the Screenshot Manager window you're used to from when you've quit a game and you've taken some screens in it; or when you're in the online manager, there will be a text link called "Upload screenshots" next to the Manage Screenshots button which will open the manager as well. From there you can also use the "Show on Disk" button to view them on your hard drive in Windows Explorer, jump to the uploaded ones via "View Online Library" or do some (local) deleting and uploading of them (with or without comments/captions).
  
• Youtube videos can only be added if you link a Youtube profile to your Steam profile. You can do the linking/adding if you click the Videos link on your Profile, or use My Profile -> My Videos on top of the Steam client. Then, you can select existing uploaded Youtube videos on your profile, Associate the video(s) with a game and Add them to your profile. Note: In order to add videos from your YouTube account, they must be set to Public visibility and they must allow embedding.
  
• Clicking on each Screenshot (yours or someone elses) lets you Rate them, Comment them (or read the existing comments), Favorite them and Share them (as a Status update, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit or on Digg - you also get a direct link to it). The View Comments & Details button also allows you to Edit a Caption, Delete the Screenshot from your Profile, Change the Screenshot's Visibility, see the File and Resolution Size, Date Posted, see the Author Stats (how many different people have seen it and how many have favorited it) and if needed Report it. Obviously, the tools given to you depend on if you're looking on your own screenshots or someone elses.

• The easiest way to see if a game supports Steam Cloud is to go to the Library and just look if there's a little cloud icon next to it. NOTE: THIS DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN IT USES CLOUD TO SAVE ITS GAMES. Some manual research will be needed to verify that.
  
• Speaking of research, Save Game Locations Wiki is an attempt to catalog the locations in which various video games hide their save files, so that gamers can have an easy reference point when creating backups. There's also the GameSave Manager application.
  
• If a game uses Steam Cloud to save its games, the files for the savegames will be located in ..Steam\userdata\<steam_id_num>\<game_id>\remote\. This may or may not contain the game's configuration files as well - it depends on the game.
  
• The Updates tab on the game's Properties screen only shows you how much Steam Cloud data is currently stored on your PC - so, when you uninstall the game, that figure goes down to zero, even though the information is safely backed-up anyway (thanks, spincube).

• You can see a list of all the groups you belong to by going to My Profile -> My Groups, or by clicking on "Browse groups" on top of the My Groups page, or just by going here: http://steamcommunity.com/actions/GroupList
  
• There are Official groups (made by developers/publishers, a list of which you can find here) and player-made groups, either Public or Invite Only.
  
• You can easily join public /official groups by using the browser, or to look in your Friends' profiles and see where they've joined. You'll also get invites to groups from either your friends or people in groups you've already joined. This can potentially become annoying, since some people join big groups just to spam invites.
  
• The My Groups page will also give you links to Leave a group, or if you are an Administrator of a group you'll also see a "Visit admin page" link next to it. The My Groups window also lets you create new groups or change the Primary group - both are shown as links on the top.
  
• When creating a new group, go to My Profile -> My Groups and then use the "Create a new group" link, or just use this url: http://steamcommunity.com/actions/GroupCreate - there you can specify a Group's Name, its Abbreviation (a unique way for people to identify your group and is limited to 12 characters), Group Link (how people will access your group's profile in the Steam Community) and a checkbox that determines if the Group will be Public (anyone can join) or Private (people will need to be invited to get in). Next to the Create button you'll also see the groups you've already made, so you don't re-make an already existing group. The name of a group is not able to be changed. You will need to create a new group if you desire a different name.
  
• To invite someone to your group, or a group where you have permissions to invite people into, either use your Friends list and right-click on someone to use the Invite to Group command by picking one of the groups from the drop-down list which shows up, or go to a person's Profile page and use the Invite to join your group link.
  
• To promote someone in your group to Officer status, go to My Profile -> My Groups and then click the Visit admin page link next to the group you wish to edit. Select the Manage Members tab and click the star next to the user you wish to promote to an officer.
  
• To remove someone from your group, go to My Profile -> My Groups and then click the Visit admin page link next to the group you wish to edit. Select the Manage Members tab and click the X next to the user you wish to remove from your group. Note: Members can only be removed from Private groups.
  
• It's much easier to quickly access your groups by using the Groups tab in your Friends list. From there, you can Join a group's chat room, View a group's profile or Leave the group by left-clicking the little triangle next to each group's name.
  
• The ownership of a group is not able to be manually transfered. However, the oldest Officer (by join date) will be promoted to owner if the current owner leaves the group.
  
• Groups are not able to be manually deleted. However, empty groups will be automatically deleted by the system. If you wish to delete a group, everyone must leave the group and it will be removed shortly afterward.

• You can open the Friends window by going to the main Steam window and selecting View -> Friends.
  
• You can add friends by clicking the "+ ADD A FRIEND..." button on the bottom of the Friends window, or clicking the little down-pointing triangle on top, right next to Friends, and selecting "Add a Friend...".
  
• You can control how your Friends list displays your friends by clicking the little down-pointing triangle on top, right next to Friends. Sort by name ignores the default of putting people who are playing games to the top of a category/tag, Show Avatar toggles if avatars are visible in the list, Show Online Friends Only toggles if you'll see offline people or not (turning this off is a good way to quickly see which friends haven't logged on in loving forever, btw) and Show everyone in the FRIENDS section will make a new tag called "All Friends" and put everyone on your list there as long as you have the option turned on. The Settings option will just open the Settings window, except with the Friends tab active.
  
• Left-clicking on the little down-pointing triangle icon next to your nickname, or right-clicking anywhere on your nickname or avatar, will let you select your current status (Online, Away, Busy, Looking to Play, Looking to Trade, Offline) and the last option, "Change Profile Name...", will open the Settings window with the Friends tab active, where you can change your nickname / profile name.
  
• Right-clicking on a friend gives you tons of options like sending a message (the same as just double clicking them in the list), viewing their profile, removing them, blocking them, inviting them to groups or group chats, etc... some of which are only visible when that person is playing a game, like Join / Launch Game (the first attempts to connect the game they're playing to the same server they're on, the second just runs the same game they're playing), View Game Info and View Game Hub.
  
• Instead of right-clicking on your Friends' names in the Friends window, you can left-click the little down-pointing triangle icon next to their names.
  
• You can add Nicknames to your Friends, so you'll know who is who after the chucklefucks change their profile name for the 100th time. Just right-click them in the Friends window and select "Add Nickname".
  
• Speaking of chucklefucks who changed their profile name for the 100th time, you can see their names history by right-clicking them in the Friends window and selecting View Aliases. It will even show you timestamps for when they've changed it!
  
• Another way to organize your Friends list is to use the Tagging feature. Right-click on a friend and select "Tag as...". You can create new tags or hit a checkbox to add them to existing ones, you can also add one person under multiple tags! A great way to add annoying family members under "Family" and "Fucktards"!
  
• You can collapse your Tags / Friends Categories by clicking the Minus icon to the left of the Tag's name.
  
• You can make notifications for specific users by right-clicking them and selecting "Notification Options". You can turn on or off features like getting a notification or playing a sound when a friend joins a game, comes online or when you receive a message from them. Useful if you want to turn that poo poo off globally, but want to know when your closest friends do things!
  
• Connecting a Facebook account to Steam gives you 50 more friend slots (from 250 to 300), so if you don't feel comfortable linking your actual account. you can just create a fake Facebook account to link to it (thanks to Palpek for reminding me).

• To turn on/off timestamps, go to View->Settings. There's a checkbox option for it under the Friends tab.
  
• You can use Steam to voice chat with your friends! In a chat, click on the bigger button with a triangle within it and select Start voice chat. Your settings for voice chat are under View->Settings, under the Voice tab.
  
• It's possible to start your own "group chat". Start a conversation with one person, then in that window click on the bigger button with a triangle within it. There's an "Invite to Chat" button there. Once you select a person, the chat window will change into a multi-user one, even if the third person hasn't joined yet. You can keep inviting as many people as you want that way, the multi-user chat interface has the same gigantic button.
  
• There's a list of all the Groups you're a member of it you swap from the Friends tab to the Groups tab in your Friends list. It will show you their names, how many are in the group chat, how many are in-game and how many are online in the group.
  
• Clicking the + icon to the left of a group's name in the group list under the Friends window will expand all of the group's members currently online, similar to your friends list, or let you know that there are too many people to show - showing you multiple thousand people at once wouldn't be fun, now would it? On the other hand, clicking the triangle to their right gives you the options of joining the group's chat room, viewing the group's profile or leaving a group. MUCH easier to handle all the groups if you've joined a lot of them than the Community -> Friends -> View Groups option, or the My Profile -> My Groups option.
  
• Another way to join a group's chat is to view the list of groups via Community -> Friends -> View Groups option or the My Profile -> My Groups option, then clicking on the "<x> in group chat" text to the right of each. There's also an option if you're on the profile page of the group, where you can hit the big blue "Enter chat room" button.
  
• If you want to kick a user from a multi-user chat you've created or have moderating powers in, left-click the little down-pointing arrow next to their name or right-click them and select the new option "Kick from Chat Room". If you do the same to your own nickname in the list, you'll get the same options as if you'd be left-clicking the arrow or right-clicking yourself in the Friends list on top where your nickname and avatar are.

• You invite someone to trade by going in your Friends list, right-clicking and selecting "Invite to Trade". You can do the same by having the chat window open with that person and clicking the downward pointing little triangle right of their avatar and name on top - there will be another "Invite to Trade" option there.
  
• You can find your Inventory (this contains your Steam Gift items, Team Fortress 2 hats, Portal 2 items, some Free2Play MMO items) by going to the top menu, selecting Games and then clicking "Manage Gifts and Guest Passes".
  
• To set who can see what's in your Inventory, click on "Privacy Settings" to your right where it says View Inventory History under the gift icon for Pending Gifts. The same options can be reached by going to Community -> Edit Profile -> Settings. You can set it to Private (only you can view your inventory), Friends Only, Friends of Friends (viewable by your friends and their friends, too), Users Only (viewable by any logged-in Steam user) and Public (viewable by anyone).
  
• You can find your trading history by going to View -> Inventory (or click the mailbox icon, then "...items in your inventory"). Look to your right where it says View Inventory History under the gift icon for Pending Gifts.
  
• You can find the gifting history by going to View -> Inventory (or click the mailbox icon, then "...items in your inventory"). Look to your right where there's the gift icon for Pending Gifts. Click on that, then look for "View Gift History" under the big "You have no pending gifts at this time" message.
  
• Some items in the Inventory are not tradable (aka you cannot put them into a Trade window - you can still move them another way like "Send <x>" on the bottom right after selecting them for games or Gift Wrapping TF2 items). To see all the ones which aren't tradable, click "Show advanced filters..." above the current items icon and then tick "Not tradable". You can see if something is tradable or not individually if you click on an item and then check its tags under its description. There are a LOT more advanced filters (type, class, quality...) for stuff like TF2 hats, too!

Tecman fucked around with this message at Feb 19, 2013 around 14:11

• Logout & Exit out of Steam. Make sure its process isn't running anymore by checking with the Task Manager.
  
• Go to where you've installed Steam, the default directories are usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, C:\Program Files\Steam or C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam.
  
• Move the folders named depotcache, SteamApps and userdata out of the Steam folder. The first folder keeps your pre-load files and information about what you have installed (thanks for the info, gibbed!), the second folder contains all of your downloaded game & source modifications files, the third folder keeps your local copies of Steamworks' Cloud-enabled games' savegames and screenshots, plus stuff like external shortcuts for non-Steam games you've added manually.
  
• You might want to also move the skins folder if you want to keep any custom skins, though if you haven't done any modifications to them you can just reinstall them later. Also, if you want to save any custom files in your Steam folder like custom Grid Icons or any external apps, be sure to move those somewhere else as well.

• Click the Windows Start button and select Control Panel
  
• Open the Add or Remove Programs dialog
  
• Select Steam from the list and click the Change/Remove button
  
• Select the Automatic option and click Next
  
• Click Finish to uninstall Steam

• Manually delete all of the remaining contents of your Steam directory. BE SURE THAT YOU'RE NOT DELETING ANYTHING YOU'RE GONNA BE MAD ABOUT LOSING LATER!
  
• If you need to clean out your Windows Registry (YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING), go to Start > Run and type in regedit.
  
• For 32-bit operating systems:
  - In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\.
  - Right-click on Valve and select Delete.
  
• For 64-bit operating systems:
  - In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Valve\.
  - Right-click on Valve and select Delete.
  
• In the left-hand column of your registry editor, navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam.
  
• Right-click on Valve select Delete.
  
• Close your Registry Editor.

• Go to Start > Run
  
• Type in: regedit. Press Enter.
  
• Browse to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\.
  - Each Steam game will be listed as Steam App <number>
  - You may determine the game which corresponds to the application number by clicking on the Steam App <number> in the left column and looking at the InstallLocation regkey for the name of the game.
  
• When you have found the game you wish to remove from the Add/Remove Programs menu, delete the Steam App <number> directory for the game.
  
• Refresh your Add/Remove Programs list.
  

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam]
    @="URL:steam protocol"
    "URL Protocol"=""

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\DefaultIcon]
    @="steam.exe"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell]

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell\Open]

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\steam\Shell\Open\Command]
    @="\"(steam location here, use '\\' for folders instead of '\'.)" \"%1\""

Tecman fucked around with this message at Mar 14, 2013 around 19:57